On our drive from Katoomba in the Blue Mountains to meet Peter at a lookout along the way to the Hunter Valley wine region, I made Frank pull over so I could take a picture of this kangaroo warning sign. Little did I know that this was major foreshadowing.
At the Kumajong Heights lookout point where we met Peter, we had an interesting sighting of another kind - this is a kookaburra, which apparently makes a noise that sounds like laughing (hence the song we learned in elementary school, for those who know what I'm talking about).
We had breakfast with Peter and were escorted part of the way along our journey before we had to say goodbye. I spent most of the ride to Hunter Valley on the lookout for kangaroos (or a wombat or wallaby or any sort of Australian wildlife), but was very disappointed.
We got to our guest house, called The Carriages, early this afternoon. It's in the town of Pokolbin which is part of the Hunter Valley, an area reknowned for its vineyards. The building has a beautiful verandah and is surrounded by gorgeous flowers.
We went to a place nearby for lunch and then set out to try some wines. Hunter Valley is filled with rolling hills and a vineyard every where you look. Here is what the countryside looks like:
We went to the McWilliams Mount Pleasant Estate to do a tasting, somewhat arbitrarily because we had heard that it won Best "Cellar Door" for 2008. ["Cellar Door" seems to mean "wine tasting area" here.] Here is the array of wines we sampled:
We really liked two of them - a Semillon and a Shiraz - so we settled on buying one bottle of the Semillon (Lovedale 2001) to bring to dinner tonight.
On our way home we stopped at the Hunter Valley Gardens, which had a beautiful entry way (pictured) but it was almost closing time, raining, and the entry fee was expensive so we didn't go through the actual gardens.
So, now for the exciting part... as we were driving back to The Carriages, I happened to glance out the window and notice animals grazing. All of a sudden, I realized that they were kangaroos - the animal I had been dying to see my entire stay in Australia. Frank managed to pull over on the side of the road and we stood there and watched an entire HERD of kangaroos (not sure that's the actual term but you get the idea) grazing and hopping around. There were at least 30 of them and I cannot even express how amazing it was watching them. I had completely given up hope of seeing even ONE! Amazing... Here is a hopelessly inadequate shot that doesn't even show the full group of them but gives some idea of what we saw.
I can now leave Australia happy.
We had a lovely dinner at a winery restaurant called Amanda's On the Edge and are now finished with our amazing Australia experience.
We leave here tomorrow morning to drive to the Sydney airport and head to Singapore.
ILM
What a fabulous picture of the Kookaburra. You either have a great zoom in lens or you got really close. I'm totally with you regarding the wildlife. I didn't know it would be that hard to spot a kangaroo.
ReplyDeleteHerd is perfectly acceptable. They also go by troop and mob of kangaroos. I've only seen the cartoon ones (which Sylvester the cat thinks are giant mice) and the picture of one in Wii Brain Academy in the animal identification game.
ReplyDeleteThe kookaburra song finally makes sense! Now if you could give me an explanation on the greek god Pan song, I'd appreciate it. :)
ReplyDelete